June 19, 2013

Well, eventhough I wrote "so far the best movie I can found", in fact I watched it last night. Ha ha.

Mary and Max is a clay-animated black comedy-drama (this is how wikipedia explained it), written and directed by Adam Elliot. On its website, written that the production took almost five years to finished, well a super long time but the result just worth it. It is a stop motion animation, and yes I told you, they used clay, and just imagine how they made all the scenes and episodes by pinched the clay all day and night long, sewed the costumes for the clay-characters, made the expression, took the photos, and made in into one solid and awesome movie. As a pottery student, I just really amaze how they can do it, crazy!

The story itself it's about a 9 years old australian girl whose her family is pretty much messed up (a kleptomaniac mother and an alcoholic father). She also a bullying object of her friends because she has a birthmark on her forehead which looks like poo. Yes she doesn't have any close friend, the closest one she has is Len Hislop, a feetless world war II veteran who has an agraphobia (afraid of world outside his house). One day Mary decide to write a letter to a stranger in New York (she found the name and the address from the telephone book), and the stranger is Max. Max is a 44 years old, obesed, and has various mental illness (specifically one called the asperger). And because they have similar (but different) background (feel neglected, don't have any friend, and some sad sad life stories), they becoming best friend and writing each other for over than 20 years.

The storyline is just perfect. And the sad events just a real bad-sad. I don't want to spoil anything here, but I can guarantee this is just crazily an awesome movie (ever)! This movie taught me how to live with your imperfection and think of it not as a failure, and just like this movie tagline, sometimes perfect strangers make the best friends.

Besides the story which I really love, the other things that make me really into this movie are; the main item here is a pen-pal-connection, I love to write letters (I have so many pen-pals now inside and outside Indonesia) and this movie just provides me enough spirit to keep writing; this movie also made basically from clay and I am a pottery student, clay is my everyday partner and I am so much inspired by this movie; and yes true and truly, by watching this movie I feel like I should be more loving myself.

This movie will shows you 'the other side' of the happy ending. I never thought that an animation can really stole my heart, but this one is (indeed) stolen mine. If you believing me that much, please try to find this movie and start to watch it. I'd love to hear your story that you are loving this move as much as I do.